


On Your Every Body (Though Your Skin Will Come Unmarked)

by Isagel



Series: On Your Every Body Universe [1]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Dream Sex, Genderfuck, Genderplay, Genderqueer, Genderqueer Character, Other, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 22:52:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/182168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isagel/pseuds/Isagel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Eames, but I seem to recall the plan calling for you to distract the mark with your feminine wiles, not your team mates."</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Your Every Body (Though Your Skin Will Come Unmarked)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic written in my On Your Every Body universe, where Eames is genderqueer. This story is the shameless porn; And the Heart Lies Deeper Still Than Bones is the love story; you don't need to have read the one to appreciate the other. More stories in this universe may follow in future, but each piece really stands on its own.
> 
> With deepest thanks to aurora_84. <3

The door opens and closes, the sound of music and conversation from downstairs briefly louder, then muffled once more. Arthur glances up only long enough to confirm the identity of the person entering, before turning his attention back to the job at hand.

He attaches the green wire he’s holding, screwing the bare copper end of it carefully in place, then reaches for the blue one, which is the last; separates it out from the tangled nest of colors. Behind his bent back, the lock on the door clicks. There is the slow, deliberate rhythm of steps coming closer, stiletto heels on the parquet floor. He doesn’t look up when the desk sways, partly because the work he’s doing is too sensitive to allow for flawed concentration, but mostly because he knows it’s fucking annoying. Out of the corner of his eye, though, he sees the shimmer of black silk as his colleague slides up to settle on the polished mahogany surface next to the near-finished bomb, the way the slit in her full-length gown falls open just so to reveal long, smooth legs rubbing together like a caress as they cross, dangling elegantly off the edge of the desk, a bare thigh displayed inches from his hip.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. Eames,” he says, twisting the wire in his fingers into place, “but I seem to recall the plan calling for you to distract the mark with your feminine wiles, not your team mates.”

Eames chuckles, tossing her hair back, the warm light from the desk lamp refracting off the rippling blondness. Her foot hooks around Arthur’s knee, slides upwards along the back of his thigh: a light, suggestive pressure through the fine wool of his pants. The touch connects at a precise moment in his work when a slight unsteadiness in his hand is unlikely to blow them both sky high and put a premature end to the job. His hand remains steady, of course, which makes the expertly calculated timing infuriating rather than impeccable.

“No reason I can’t do both, is there, darling?” Eames says. The voice is different, obviously - female, the accent more neutral - but the tone is insufferable as ever.

Arthur reaches down and grabs her by the ankle - so slender on this frame that his fingers overlap when they close around it - lifting her foot away from his body and letting it drop, before picking up the miniature screwdriver again. His eyes still haven’t left the bomb.

“You’re assuming I would let myself be distracted,” he says.

“Deducing,” Eames corrects. “After all, we are in your dream, dear, and I can’t remember Ariadne furnishing this room quite so... _invitingly_.”

Arthur does look up at that, following Eames’s nod towards the deeper recesses of the room. He’s pretty sure there were bookcases there when he began working on the bomb. Now there is a king sized bed - ripe with pillows, glistening with the soft glow from a bedside lamp that clings like honey to the champagne colored folds of satin sheets.

Arthur hates his subconscious.

“Or perhaps you were intending to be distracted by someone a bit more like this?” Eames says.

When Arthur turns back around, Eames is wearing his own body, his own smirking face, male and familiar from the waking world up above. Somehow the tuxedo he’s dressed in - dinner jacket almost as well-tailored as the one Arthur has left hanging over the back of the desk chair - looks as perfectly indecent on him as the plunging neckline of the evening gown from a moment ago.

Arthur also hates Eames.

Or at least he hates that knowing smirk. Fortunately, he knows a number of ways to erase it. Some of them are more than a little elaborate, but if there’s anything he’s learned from working with Eames, it’s that the simplest methods are often the most efficient. And besides, they do have more than an hour of dreamtime to fill with distractions before Ariadne and Yusuf bring the mark back here.

He puts the screwdriver down on the desk - precise, measured movements; the click of metal on wood sharp and exact - and takes the fragment of a step necessary to close the distance between them, his hip brushing up against Eames’s knee. He lifts his hand and lays it directly between Eames’s legs.

The sudden, loud breath Eames lets out does indeed wipe the smile from his lips.

“It’s true I like _this_ ,” Arthur says, leaning in to speak in Eames’s ear, squeezing down to clarify his meaning. It’s gratifying how Eames’s cock leaps into his hand at the first hint of pressure. “But I hardly need to provide satin sheets to enjoy it, do I?”

Eames breathes a huff of laughter, warm against the side of Arthur’s neck, filling the hollow beneath the edge of his jaw.

“No, you do appear to be quite content to make use of the nearest horizontal surface that presents itself.” A pause, for effect. For rolling memories and dreams around in their minds like wine on the tongue. “Or vertical surface, for that matter,” Eames adds, his voice at the same time rougher and more flippant, and Arthur bites his own lip at the flaring images of a Caracas back alley three nights ago, of the scrape he would see on Eames’s cheekbone now if this were reality, the broken skin where his face hit the wall. “But do you really think I’m more of a lady in this form?” Eames asks, and changes.

Arthur still hasn’t wrapped his mind around the technicalities of forgery, and he suspects he’ll never fully understand how the human brain processes the shift as the forger slips from one shape to another. There should be a moment of transition, but though they’re touching, he doesn’t feel it. There is simply a different Eames in the place of the other one, instantly as solid and detailed and whole as though she had been there all along.

Her legs are still spread for him. Beneath the black silk dress, she isn’t wearing any panties.

“Not more of a lady,” Arthur says, skimming his fingers down along the soft folds of her pussy. Where Eames’s male body had been half hard, this one is slick with the first traces of moisture, leaking more. “But a different class of slut.”

“Always such a gentleman, Arthur,” Eames says, but she grinds up against the heel of his hand, leans back on her own hands to tilt her hips up, give him better access. “Are you going to keep insulting my virtue, or are we getting to the part where you put your mouth to better use?”

“Though obviously still a _greedy_ slut,” Arthur amends. “ _Plus ça change._ ”

All the same, they both know what it is he wants, here, and he isn’t going to be coy about it. He steps between Eames’s legs and they wrap around him. When he goes to his knees, she makes a breathless, feminine sound in the back of her throat, her heels sliding up the center of his spine, rucking his shirt up, and, no, he has no lies in him about this at all. He rubs his cheek against the inside of her thigh, against the almost surreal softness of her skin, closes his eyes for a second to simply breathe in her heat, the thick scent of her arousal.

Dreaming, like life, is an immersive experience, only as real as the sum of your impressions, and every sense plays its part. In this, it’s the scent that breaks him, every time, the taste of Eames’s sex when he presses his lips against it, drags his tongue through her wetness to part her inner folds: the richness of the flavor breaking on his palate, the complexity of it; so very clearly woman, in all its components, and so unmistakably _Eames_. He digs his fingers into the firm muscles of her thighs and laps at the edges of her opening, shifting on the floor to ease the pressure of his pants on his rapidly hardening erection. Eames is a fucking artist at this, though far too obnoxious a bastard for Arthur to ever admit to that opinion out loud, and sometimes he thinks it’s the seemingly effortless display of skill that drives him dizzy with lust as much as the physical shape that is the resulting artwork. Not that this feels like art. It feels raw and hungry and primal, and Arthur has always loved this act, lost himself in it with every woman he’s ever been with, but this is Eames, who isn’t a woman at all, except when she is, and somehow that’s better, somehow the impossibility of it turns the screw of desire that last, extra turn, like everything Eames does winds him tighter, ratchets his annoyance and his confidence and his pure, overpowering _want_ to new heights, until everything is clearer, sharper, hyper-real like the lines of a dreamscape.

Eames makes another noise – a moan and a curse and an encouragement – and Arthur shoves his hands up beneath her dress to grab her ass, yank her forward on the desk towards him, shifting her body with ease the way he never can when it’s male and heavy with muscle. Shoves her pussy into his face, or maybe it’s his face into her pussy, and he hears her draw in a sudden breath, scramble for purchase on the desk, the screwdriver clattering to the floor by his knee, and her hand is in his hair, for balance, or just to hold him right there.

“Fucking Christ,” she says. “You’ll be the death of me, pet. You really will.”

And she’s grinding herself against his face, her clit a swollen hardness against the bridge of his nose, and he knows his fingers are leaving bruises on her skin, deep marks that will be washed away with the flood wave of the kick, marks that he’s breathing in like the slick heat of her flesh, that he’ll remember, like Eames will remember the red crescents her long nails are digging into the back of his neck, will trace them with blunt fingertips when the slate of Arthur’s body has been wiped clean with waking. All the traces there, in their minds, like layer upon layer of reality and dream, one within the other, depth within depth, all of them ephemeral and true. Genuine and forged, like the rough, high-pitched keening from Eames’s throat, the quiver in her thighs, and Arthur shifts his grip to hold her down, keep her still, bring his tongue up to her clit.

She does grow still then, a beautiful coil of tension, anticipation held like an indrawn breath, and he has to take a moment to calm his own heart before he can run the tip of his tongue in a slow circle around the edges of her hardened nub. She lets her breath out, a low, drawn-out hiss, her grip tightening on his neck, and his hips cant forward in sympathy, his balls clenching with awareness of how close she is.

Another circle, in the opposite direction. Forcing himself to go slow.

“I’d tell you not to be a cocktease,” Eames says, “but considering what a contrary, arrogant prick you are, you’d probably stop altogether just to spite me.”

Arthur bites the inside of his cheek to catch the laugh that wants to escape, and makes himself sit back and look up.

He quirks his mouth in the most supercilious hint of a grin he can manage.

“Want to come, Eames?” he asks.

“What I want,” Eames says, “is to put one of these ludicrously high heels I’m wearing through your jugular if you don’t put your mouth back in its proper place right now, but since that would only wake you up and ruin everyone’s hard work, I’m trying my utmost to restrain myself.” Her face is flushed with sex, drops of sweat rising in the valley between her breasts. She squeezes Arthur’s neck, runs her thumb along the line of his throat. “I’m not sure I’ll succeed,” she adds, and it’s soft, gentle, like a secret confided.

Their eyes are locked, their breaths loud in the quiet room.

“God, I’m going to fuck you so hard you’ll feel it when you’re awake,” Arthur says, unthinking, the rush of desire by-passing every filter in his brain.

Eames smiles, wide and breathtaking.

“That’s the spirit, darling,” she says, but Arthur is already bending his head again, and the “ _Yes_ ” that follows is a moan, not a word.

He licks her for real, then; no teasing, just the tip of his tongue drawing tight, swift patterns in that single, perfect spot, his ears listening for the shift in her breathing when he does it just right. He could lose his mind to this: to the swell of her clit beneath his tongue, the tickle of her pubic hair in his nose, the point of her heel clawing at his back through the fabric of his shirt. The level of detail vivid and intoxicating, and his mind could drown in it, if he didn’t know one level from the next, if he didn’t feel the weighted cube of his totem rest against his thigh, there in his pocket, safe.

But Eames isn’t safe at all, in any shape, and here, in this shape, she comes like the releasing of a spring, body arching in harmonic tremors, voice raw with a beautiful, animal sound, and Arthur keeps licking, keeps making her tremble until he’s burning with the ache in his jaw, until her fingers tighten in his hair and pull him back, until she’s kissing him, long and deep and possessive.

Her lips, paradoxically, are sharper like this, not nearly as soft, but Eames always, always kisses just the same.

And then they’re simply breathing, forehead to forehead, Eames’s fingers relaxing in his hair, smoothing it back down, Arthur’s palms resting open on her thighs. Outside, it starts to rain, tinny music on the window sill, the skies bending to Ariadne’s blueprints. They still have plenty of time.

“Hmmmmmmm,” Eames says, a sigh of something not quite like satisfaction, and straightens her back. “Bed, don’t you think?”

She swings one leg over Arthur’s head to place her feet on the floor and walk away, not waiting for an answer.

“If you insist,” Arthur says. When he shifts, his knee bumps against the screwdriver, making it roll on the parquet floor, turning hesitantly on its axis like the last spins of a slowing top. Arthur picks it up as he rises to stand, cutting the spinning short, and places it back on the desk.

He takes a folded handkerchief from his pocket, uses it to wipe the traces of Eames’s moisture from his face. Refolds it, soiled parts to the inside, and puts it back.

His totem is in his other pocket.

When he looks up, Eames’s reflection is in the window glass, dotted with raindrops. She moves, and there is the sound of a zipper. Arthur’s erection presses hard against the edge of the desk. Eames smiles at him, knowing. Her dress falls to the floor.

Arthur turns to her. She is standing by the bed in a pool of shed silk, wearing nothing now but a black lace bustier, her nipples half visible through the mesh. Her figure is a perfect hourglass, full hips and slender waist and breasts so heavy that when she undoes the hooks down the front of her bra, they come _falling_ out, tumbling forward with the pull of gravity.

Arthur can hear himself swallow.

“Come on, then, pet,” Eames says, and drops her undergarment to the floor, kicking her shoes off as she falls back onto the bed, making the mattress bounce, her breasts bounce.

Arthur goes, pulling his bow tie open as he steps to the bed, his fingers perhaps fumbling a little as he begins to unfasten the studs on his shirt, putting the first one in his pocket as he kneels by Eames’s feet on the bed, moving on to the second one.

“No,” Eames says, leaning up to grab him by the shirt front, pull him down over her. “Like this.”

Arthur catches himself with a hand on the mattress near her head, strokes the other one down her neck, along her shoulder, fingertips to collarbone. Her pale skin is cream-on-cream on the satin sheets, rich with golden accents where it catches the light, a perfect mix of colors.

“You know,” he says, “sometimes I worry about this preoccupation of yours with ruining my clothes.”

Eames arcs into his touch. Her hand is fisted in the collar of his shirt, her thumb tracing the hollow of his throat where the fabric falls open, her eyes focused on the same spot. Arthur wonders if she can see the pulse beating there, feel the breakneck speed of it.

“Not ruining,” Eames says. “Disarranging. What can I say? It’s the small pleasures that make life worth living.”

Arthur trails his fingers along the upper curve of her breast, down the center of her body, the surface of her breastbone smooth beneath warm skin.

“Funny,” he says. “I didn’t realize you ever did anything small.”

“Only because people in my vicinity keep failing to understand subtlety.” Her thumb stills at the base of his throat. “You’re teasing again.”

Arthur’s lips quirk.

“Yes.”

Eames looks up to meet his eyes.

“Don’t.”

It’s like a punch to the gut, the heat in her narrow eyes, and he breathes her name, suddenly serious.

“Eames…”

“Come here,” Eames says, and pulls him down.

His weight on top of her, and she gasps into his mouth when his leg slips between hers, his thigh pressing up against her pussy. She rubs herself against the wool of his pants, one hand on his shoulder, the other fisted in the sheets, and her pubic bone is hard beneath the softness of her flesh, unyielding resistance. For a minute all he can do is grind his cock against the swell of her hip, suddenly lost to the sweet, sweet friction, panting his hunger into the skin of her neck, mouthing at her jugular.

“Jesus, Arthur,” Eames says. “Fuck. I want…”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Yeah, hang on.”

He shifts to cup her breast in his hand, find her nipple with his mouth. She lets out a low hiss and goes pliant beneath him, fucking herself with slow, languid movements against his leg as he licks her, suckles her, laps at the peak of her nipple like a cat. He reaches over, squeezing her other breast in his palm, the opulence of it overflowing his fingers, making him moan around the tight bud between his lips. He strokes his thumb over one nipple, circles the other with his tongue, and she arcs like a wave against him, rubbing her hand along his upper arm.

“Yeah,” she says, “like that. Just…” A small laugh escapes her. “Bloody hell. I always forget how much I like this in this body.”

Arthur lifts his head to look at her, momentarily distracted by curiosity.

“I never get how it can be different,” he says. “I mean, you’re a woman in this dream, but you’re still you, you only have so many points of reference to work with.”

Eames looks back at him, licks her lower lip as if considering how to answer.

“You never…” She breaks off, her hips rocking impatiently against him. “Don’t stop, darling, if you’d be so kind.” Arthur is only too eager to comply, rubbing his cheek against the hardness of her nipple before catching it in his lips. He’s listening, though; gathering information is what he does. “You never have one of those dreams – natural, unconstructed dreams – an erotic dream, where you’re having sex, but you’re a woman instead of a man?” Arthur can’t say he has, not that he remembers, but it’s obviously a rhetorical question. And, besides, his mouth is not available for answering. “It’s like that…more or less. Your subconscious knows, or has an idea. You just have to be able to tap into that knowledge, believe that’s what you’re feeling. I don’t know, maybe… Fuck, yeah, that’s it, that’s…” Arthur soothes her with his tongue, opens his mouth to scrape his teeth over the flushed skin of her areola, before biting down to tug again at the peak of her nipple. She makes an even better noise the second time. “Mmmmmm,” she says. “You’re such a good boy.”

It feels like a pat on the head, and he can’t let that slip, even if right now it makes something purr inside him. He lets go of her nipple, pointedly.

“You don’t know?” he prompts. “Maybe…?”

Eames sighs, long-suffering.

“Such a good, single-minded boy,” she mocks. “Maybe Jung was right and there really is a collective subconscious to draw from. Or perhaps..” Arthur sucks her back into his mouth, and she shudders against him, her words coming ragged now. “Perhaps it’s all just a product of my imagination, my desires; not really like being a woman at all. My experience unique, tailor made, for being here, with you.” She lays her hand on Arthur’s face, cupping his cheek. Her thumb strokes along the edge of his cheekbone. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Arthur? Everything this body feels down here, existing just for us? Made to the measure of what I want from you.” Arthur’s hips stutter against her side, uncoordinated, eager as though he could push through clothes and skin to get inside her. He hates how it gives him away, although there’s hardly anything here that Eames doesn’t already know. “Yes,” she says, as if confirming his answer. “But then that’s equally true up above, isn’t it? You want this me to be just for you, too, don’t you?”

The change registers first where Eames’s hand rests on his cheek, the weight of it suddenly _more_ , the thumb at the corner of his eye larger, rougher. Then the totality of it comes crashing into his mind, and he’s aware all at once of how Eames’s nipple between his teeth is attached to flat muscle, of how Eames’s hard-on is straining thick against his thigh, of the smell of Eames’s sweat in his nostrils, sharper and muskier and _male_.

He breathes in the transformation, absorbing the way Eames’s body is stretching taller and broader on the bed, the different way in which it displaces the air around them, lets it all take the half-second it needs to settle in his mind. Then he opens his eyes and levers himself up, one hand on the mattress, the other flat on the hard expanse of Eames’s chest, brings the weight of his hips down to rest fully between Eames’s legs, cock against cock. Watches Eames’s lips part at the pressure with a shuddering breath that he feels beneath his open palm, in the tightness of his balls.

“That’s hardly a problem, is it?” he says. “For an attention whore like you.”

Eames laughs, a low, barely audible rumble. His hands skim down Arthur’s sides, fingers spanning the cummerbund at his waist.

“You know what sort of attention would be perfect at this particular moment in time? The sort that involves your hard cock up my arse.”

Arthur’s dick twitches in his pants, leaking into the cotton of his underwear.

He answers Eames with a scoff.

“In your opinion, is there ever a moment when that would be _less_ than perfect?”

“Hmmm,” Eames says, grinding his cock up against Arthur’s stomach, shameless. “You may have to give me time to think about that one.”

“Slut,” Arthur says, and it comes out the way Eames says _darling_ , all condescension and needling and tender appreciation. Eames looks incredibly pleased with himself.

Arthur sits back on his heels and says, “Turn over.”

Eames gives him a long, half-lidded look and does as he’s told, rolling in one seamless motion to kneel on all fours, legs parted enough that Arthur can fit between them. He can’t help running his hands over Eames’s shoulders, the defined muscles of his back, the slim line of his waist. When Arthur reaches the curve of his ass, Eames says,

“You’re not going to need any lubrication.”

And it’s true, the dark skin around his opening is slick and glistening, as if already prepared. There’s something to be said for the expediency of dreams.

Arthur strokes his fingers between Eames’s cheeks, watches his narrow hole expand and contract at his touch. He fumbles his pants open with his other hand, shoves his underwear down far enough to get his cock out.

“Are you going to keep me waiting, there, pet?” Eames says, and the tone is impatient, imperious, but Arthur can hear his voice crack at the edges. If they had more time, he’d make him wait, just to teach him a lesson about trying to rush things, but as it is, all he wants is to shut him up the best way he knows how.

He lines his cock up and shoves mercilessly _in_.

Eames groans, deep and rumbling, his hands clutching at the sheets as Arthur’s hands clutch at his hips, and, God, Arthur loves this, the thick coil of strength in Eames’s body, like a wild, fucking animal, all that ridiculous alpha male size and density, excessive and beautiful, curled so tight just for him, poised and straining to take him, and take him, and _take_ him, as hard as he can give. As hard as he can be _made_ to give, and, fuck, but he loves that, too, how Eames pushes at him until there’s no restraint, no dignity, no limits to the things he wants, just this vicious fire and all the ways that he can make Eames feel it, yield to it, fucking burn for him.

Long, deep thrusts that wrack the bed, and when he hits the right spot, Eames’s head drops low for him, neck bending on a shaking breath. There are rivulets of sweat forming at his nape, along the valley of his spine, lamplight dancing like flecks of gold on dampened skin, the tattoo on Eames’s shoulder blade shimmering like wet ink, as though Arthur could run his palm across it and his hand would come away blotted, black. He shifts his grip, one hand on Eames’s shoulder, fingers digging in above his collarbone, bending over him, dragging teeth up the arc of his back, harder when Eames gasps, when Eames says his name, ramming his cock home, thinking of biting down, of marks and wounds and of blood blotted away with the veil of waking. He licks the skin his teeth have scraped, licks up salt and the taste of sex. There is a bruise rising beneath his clothes, near the crease of his groin, where the totem in his pocket is ground between their bodies, again and again. The bed creaks, in time with Eames’s wordless grunts, in syncopation with the steady dripping of water outside on the window sill, single drops now from the roof above. They don’t have all night.

“It’s stopped raining,” he tells Eames, lips to the back of his neck. “If you want to do it, you should do it now.” And then, because sometimes he can afford to give Eames an inch, and he wants this like he wants to breathe: “I’m waiting.”

“Darling,” Eames says, laughing, incredulous and amused and wrecked and _pleased_. “I love being inside your twisted little mind, I really do.” And then the laugh is a woman’s laugh, and Arthur is wrapping his arms around her, gathering her up, pulling her upright into his lap.

She’s smaller, and her ass is so tight, and for a second it’s all he can do not to come just from that. She shudders, reaching back to grip his hip for balance.

“Oh, fuckfuckfuckfuck,” she says, string of words on one long exhale. “You feel huge.”

His hips jerk up into her, pure reflex, and she swears again, scrambles to grab his hand, nails sharp like it’s life or death, and shoves it down between her legs.

She’s wetter than before; soaking, helplessly wet, the way he’s always known women to go wet from this. He thinks about who, how many, Eames has fucked, and how - to know, to emulate. The research Eames has made for the sake of verisimilitude. He rakes his fingers through her cunt, possessive, and Eames clings to his wrist, thumb tight on the bone, moves on his cock with an undulating motion like she wants to feel and savor every inch. Her blonde hair is a deep honey at the temples where it’s moist with sweat, her shoulder white and clean, a canvas stripped of paint. Arthur kisses her there, where the edge of her tattoo is not, buries his nose in the curve of her neck. Fills his hand with the weight of her breast, her other nipple catching on the cotton sleeve of his shirt. She’s rocking back and forth on his lap, wild and driven, and he has to hold her tight to hold her at all, pinning her to him, back to chest. He can barely stand the perfect noise she makes when he squeezes down on her breast.

He strokes her open, spreads his knees to push her legs wider, and drives two fingers into her. He can feel the shape of his own cock against the back of his knuckles, bending the walls inside her; her tightness is unbelievable, her soft, dripping heat. She chokes on an indrawn breath, so still, holding on the verge. He crooks his fingers, searching, his heart beating so fast, pressing up and in, in…

She comes with a surprised shout, head tipping back on his shoulder, nails digging into the thin skin of his wrist, her ass squeezing at his cock, wringing her name from him.

“Eames,” he breathes, voice moist against the shell of her ear. “Fuck, _Eames_.”

“Don’t stop,” she says. “Don’t bloody stop.”

Inside, she’s pulsing around his fingers, and just the thought that she isn’t _done_ , that she wants _more_ makes him moan as he fucks up into her, makes him desperate to shove under her skin like she’s inside his dreams, like he’s already inside hers.

Her weight is on his lap and there is no in-and-out friction when he moves, just their bodies rising together on every thrust, sinking back down, her ass clutching and releasing around him, her breath coming in little pants, quick, quick, quick, chasing what she needs, and Arthur mouths at her jaw line, her cheekbone, the smudged edge of eye shadow shimmering at her temple. He presses the heel of his hand against her clit, feels her grind against it, writhing in his arms, clenching around the place where his fingers rub inside her, tight, tight circles on that soft, hidden spot, and she’s shaking, sobbing with need, or maybe that’s him, everything tension and closeness now, and he needs to come, needs her to tip him over, to kick his universe out from under him, the way she always does.

“Come on, Eames,” he tells her, “come on. You’re not getting a musical countdown, if that’s what you’re holding out for.”

Eames gasps, a jolt of breath, like laughter catching her unawares.

“Very droll,” she says. The words sound like they’re a struggle, no room in her lungs for speech, but of course she doesn’t stop talking. Arthur twists her nipple between his fingers, just for the sadistic satisfaction of upping the difficulty. “I’m afraid…” When her voice falters, it makes his balls clench with something blinding and raw. “I’m afraid a little death still doesn’t amount to a kick under PASIV, though. You’re a decent screw, love, but you’re no shot to the face.”

“Sweetheart,” Arthur says, deadpan, “if facials are your kink, all you had to do was say.”

Eames does laugh at that, a near silent rippling of her diaphragm that Arthur feels rather than hears, another rhythm of her body, feeding into the tension, pushing it into freefall.

“Don’t,” she pants. “God, I can’t…”

There’s a lump in Arthur’s throat, a tightness sudden in his chest.

“I’d rub it into your skin,” he says, and his voice, God, the _sound_ of his voice. “Lick it off your lips, the corner of your pretty mouth…”

“Arthur,” Eames says. “Arthur, _please_ ,” but she’s already coming, clamping down around him even before he scrapes his thumbnail across her nipple, making her bite her lip, spasm and thrash against his grip like a thing possessed.

Arthur presses his open mouth against the place beneath her ear where her jawbone curves, his nose squashed in her hair, and drives into her – up and up and up; one long, dizzying climb as he fills her, paints her insides wet. Through the thin barrier inside her, he feels his cock jerk against the backs of his fingers with every spurt, his climax dirty and detailed and messily real, chaotic and devastating. His hand is going numb from the vice grip of her pleasure, the tips of his fingers wrinkling with the new rush of moisture within her. He feels as though he’s coming forever, time extended like a deeper dream, days and weeks and centuries unfolding within a moment of the mind. Through it all, he clings to Eames; beneath his lips her taste is weighted, falling loaded on his tongue.

His breath is still uneven, his heartbeat louder than her voice, when she tugs at his hand between her legs and says, “Arthur, let me… I want…”

She’s still moving, little twists of her hips on his cock, as though her body can’t give up the sensation.

He shakes himself, pulling himself back into some semblance of focus, and lets his fingers slip from her. She shudders, and makes a noise somewhere between a benediction and a whine. His cock twitches helplessly inside her, one last aftershock.

As soon as his fingers are clear of her, she pitches forward, already transforming as she takes her weight on her hands.

Arthur is too dazed to expect it, and for a fraction of a second, before his subconscious catches up, there is a rattling in the window panes, a creaking in the paneled walls.

Eames holds very, very still.

“Too much?” he asks.

Eames would say it’s due to a lack of imagination, but in fact Arthur is a notoriously stable dreamer for two reasons: he has discipline, and his conscious mind walks in step with his subconscious. He may wish it didn’t always project so clearly to Eames, but he knows his own psyche. Knows his desires. The glass has already stopped rattling. In his chest, there is a new breathlessness, a hollow shaped by the seamless exactness of the change.

He curves himself over Eames’s back to speak in his ear, slides his hands up the lengths of his thighs; against rough hairs, over hard muscle, up to stroke at the edges of his groin.

“If you ever overstep the bounds, Mr. Eames,” he says, “believe me, you will know.”

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Eames says, his hand scrambling to take hold of his cock.

Arthur bats it away.

“Just for me, remember?” he says, and Eames fucking _whimpers_ , arcing his back to grind his ass down on Arthur’s lap.

It’s too raw, this soon after coming, but his softening cock is still just about hard enough that he can shove back and fuck Eames through this. And if the friction is too vibrantly abrasive, then isn’t that merely in keeping with everything else between them?

He closes his fist around Eames’s erection, and, God, yes, that’s good; the hardness of it, the way the long, thick shape fits in his palm. He squeezes down, just to feel it, runs his thumb over the sleek contours of the head.

“Come on, darling, don’t dawdled,” Eames says, and Arthur would have some retort for that, except that Eames sounds like a man at the end of his tether, and Arthur wants to see him fall.

Wants to catch him when he does.

Rough, quick strokes, then, no attempt to hold anything back, and his hand on Eames’s cock is sliding smooth, slick with the juices from Eames’s pussy: a perfect paradox, like the vertigo thrill of every corner turned on the Penrose steps. Arthur wants… God, he wants… He bites at the strained muscle at the back of Eames’s neck, twists his hand harder on his shaft, digs his fingers into the flesh of his thigh. Shifts the angle of his pounding hips, and there, that’s it, that spot inside, and Eames is coming, spilling over the satin sheets, over Arthur’s fingers, falling forward onto the mattress as his arms give out, a beautiful, boneless heap sprawled on forearms and knees, moaning as Arthur’s cock slips from him, and Arthur keeps working him, keeps going, until his wrist is sore, until Eames is completely soft in his hand.

Then he crawls up the bed until he’s kneeling by Eames’s head. Eames’s face is buried in the sheets, but when Arthur places his hand on the nape of his neck, he turns to him, looking up.

Arthur holds out his other hand to Eames, the hand that has been around him, inside her. His heart is beating in his throat, so eager, but almost timid. Rabbit and predator at once.

Eames licks his lips. Lifts his gaze to meet Arthur’s. His eyes are glazed over with a post-coital high that makes Arthur rub his thumb along his hairline, just behind his ear where the skin is thin and sensitive. Soothing. Protective in a way he would never acknowledge.

“Yeah,” Eames says, smiling. “Yeah, come here, pet.”

Arthur moves his hand closer, Eames cranes his head to reach it, and then there are lips on Arthur’s skin, Eames’s soft, voluptuous mouth around his fingers, Eames’s tongue in the creases of his palm, licking away the traces of his own semen, the remains of her own wetness. The act is a paradoxical, impossible obscenity, more _right_ than any totem could reveal. Arthur holds his breath, watches every flick of Eames’s tongue, every glide of his lips. Eames keeps his eyes closed, but his face is intent.

When it’s done, Eames stretches beneath Arthur’s hand, a languid, unselfconscious extension of naked limbs that should come with a purr.

Arthur takes a deep breath, and gives Eames’s neck a shake.

“You want a post-coital nap, you can have it after we wake up,” he says, turning away to sit on the edge of the bed, rearranging his clothes, refastening his pants.

“Always such admirable professionalism,” Eames says, mocking.

There is a rustle of sheets behind Arthur’s back, as though Eames is simply luxuriating in the softness of the satin, basking in his own contentment. Arthur makes a mental note about his subconscious’s observations on sensualism and the possibility of procuring new sheets in the real world.

“I have a bomb to place in a briefcase,” he says. “You should put some clothes on.”

“Hm.” Eames presses his leg against Arthur’s ass, curls an annoying foot around his hip, tugging slightly. “Dinner jacket, darling, or evening gown?”

Arthur crosses the ends of his bow tie, tying it with precise, practiced motions. He doesn’t need a mirror for the task any more than he needs the light on to strip a gun.

“Do I look like I care?”

“From this vantage point,” Eames says, and Arthur can’t see his face, but he can _hear_ him smiling, hear the satisfaction beneath the words, “it looks like you don’t give a rat’s arse.”

Arthur folds his collar down over his tie, just so.

“A remarkably astute observation,” he says, wrapping his hand around the slim bones of Eames’s ankle, dropping his foot onto the bed with a firm squeeze as he stands up. “If a little crudely phrased.”

Behind him, Eames laughs.

On his way to the desk, Arthur steps across the black silk of her dress, pooled on the floor.

He loves the way it draws the light.


End file.
